Ship Tease
by Rachel C. Astrid
Summary: He watches her dampen her lips as he leans in close to breathe against her sweat-slick throat. His whisper brims with seduction and humor both, and she loves him even more for it. "Tell me a story, Kate. Write me a Beckle romance."
1. Chapter 1

**Ship Tease**

By Rachel C. Astrid

Synopsis: Castle muses about "Caskett." HERB (Humorous Established Relationship Banter) and lovin' ensue.

Rated M for mildly explicit sexytimes

Disclaimer: Here's hopin' for a very HERB-al Season 5 from Milmar & Co.

* * *

"You know what I realized?" he says, easing her backward, and if they hadn't made love dozens of times already she'd ask him if he's always this talkative in bed. (He is.) "I should be getting compensation from the e-Reader people. Put my leads together and you get 'Nook.'"

She hums, bracing her hands against his bare chest as he caresses her already-tousled hair. "I always thought of them as Rookie."

"Or Nookie." He waggles his brows at her and lowers his head just long enough to nibble her ear—half tease, half reassurance that he hasn't forgotten why they came in here and stripped off all their clothes at the door.

Sometimes it frustrates her how well he can hold a conversation—naughty or not—while they make love; she always thought that she was the multi-tasker, the focused one. As it turns out, the writer isn't too shabby at wielding words and rendering her speechless all at once. By now his decidedly talented lips have moved on to her breast, so as usual, her end of the conversation comes out in a barely coherent murmur: "Castle."

He pauses to look up at her, a realization dawning upon him and warming him with the thrill of curiosity. "Wait, _always thought of th_—Beckett, are . . . are you a shipper?"

Pulled into awareness, she slides lower on the bed, still beneath him, and conveniently busies herself with her mouth on his neck. "Hmm?"

He is not so easily distracted. He slides lower, too, and she follows him to avoid breaking the contact. "You ship-a-tize Nikki and Rook, don't you?"

Her responsive "Mm," would be ambiguous were her continued ministrations not so suspect.

"Just how long?" he demands. Their feet are dangling off the end of the bed, and if they keep up this dance, it won't be long before they relocate to the floor.

Somehow she murmurs it into his stubble: "Longer than you know."

"Huh." His turn to be speechless.

_Finally._

Now that she's managed a few coherent words, she's feeling cocky. She wants to give it to him as good as she gets. She teases his pecs with her fingers while explaining nonchalantly: "And the verb form is 'ship,' by the way. You ship a couple."

He laughs, low and sexy and hers alone to hear. "You ship Caskett, too?"

"Why not Beckle?"

"Beckett, the irony. Please. Indulge in the irony."

She tongues the crook of his shoulder. "I prefer to indulge in other ways."

There's about one second that his eyes close and he's on the verge of incapacitated, but ultimately, words don't fail him. "You go first all the time," he complains, even as her mouth works his pulse point. "Let me have Caskett."

Despite his recovery, she's getting high on power. "You gonna write us a romance?"

"Sure," he says, tapping his fingers across the flesh of her inner thighs. He offers only the most fleeting of touches to her core. She's already wet. "This is the first draft."

She groans, both at his tantalizing touch and at his shamelessly corny humor; leans into him to make her point (and, admittedly, to try to get his fingers closer to where she _really _wants them)—but he catches her off-guard when he suddenly stops, and she catches his eye.

"Oops," he says with a grin. "Typo."

"Shift," she grunts, surprising him this time, and he pauses.

"As in—the key?"

"No, as in move over so I can get on top of you."

He does as directed, letting them both re-center on the bed before someone takes a tumble, but he says cheekily, "I thought you were getting off on keyboard porn."

She humors him with a response as she brushes him below the belt he isn't wearing; strokes the naked length of him, freezing at a perfectly frustrating moment. Turnabout, and all that. "_Num Lock_?" she asks, watching him barely suppress what can only be described as a sob.

But then, even from his lowly position beneath her, he turns the tables, taking her wrists in-hand and securing them behind her back. He skims his teeth on her jaw before whispering beside her ear: "I was thinking more along the lines of _Control_."

She smiles, enjoying the game now; enjoying the doubleheader of a verbal and a physical challenge. "Then I have one word for you," she husks, and in her peripheral vision, she can see him swallow in anticipation.

"Handcuffs?" he supplies.

"_Escape_." And she does; manages to seize his length again in the process, grinding against him until he positions himself and arches into her.

She thinks she may have won until he swallows her gasp with his lips, parting to meet her smoky gaze. His quip is complacent, seductive: "_Enter_."

She's still choking back another gasp as he moves beneath her, touching her where their bodies are already joined. "Not _Insert_?"

"Vowel sounds," he insists, lifting as she bears down. "_Enter_ is prettier."

She rolls her hips, riding him; watching his expression betray the fact that he's beginning to forget his own name. So the wordsmith _can _be incapacitated after all. She baits him with a teasing question, distracting him just long enough that it draws out their pleasure another glorious moment. "You think about 'pretty'?"

As she clenches around him, he claims the last word: "All the time."

Then they're both reduced to noises that articulate nothing but speak volumes.

Later, they lay together, only half-covered with barely straightened sheets, more for the feel of the smooth fabric on their skin than for the warmth beyond one another's flushed bodies. Sated and protective, her arm is wrapped around him, her fingers playfully threading through his hair. He's curled into her, his ear against her breast, listening to her heart beat for them.

She feels the vibrations of his words thrum through her before she hears them: "What about Rate?"

It only takes her a moment to emerge from the fog of pleasure to decode the portmanteau. "As in Rick and Kate?"

He grins into her. "And my First Rate Mate."

She turns out her lip in thought, as though halfway between ambivalent and indignant, but really just unable to resist teasing him again. "Why not Kick?"

"Because," he says with an air of defiance, and hell if that alone doesn't make her toes curl. He smiles, burrowing beneath the covers and nestling into her curves. "I'd rather make you scream."

/


	2. Chapter 2

Notes: This has been on my harddrive since I posted the first part last summer. C&B have obviously had a different conversation about the word "Caskett" by now, but I guess that doesn't matter. Either this is a two-shot or it will be a collection of pieces on the themes of teasing, shipping, and/or banter-sex.

Thanks for all the feedback on the first part!

* * *

He wastes no time; his tongue is inside her, and she's reminded once again that the tongue is the strongest—and clearly most underrated—muscle in the human body. If ever she doubted it before . . .

She might have preferred to keep the thought to herself, but before she can suppress it, a moan overtakes her: "Oh, God, your _tongue_." Did that sound as needy as she thinks it did? As though to reclaim her dignity, somehow she musters a complete, breathy sentence: "Damn, Castle—all that talking must give your mouth a good workout."

"Mm," he hums in the affirmative as he withdraws, murmuring into her wet warmth: "But this is my _favorite_ exercise." He flicks his tongue to tease her before diving in to eat, his teeth scraping against her skin like she is a delicacy he's been denied for too long.

It's so good that she can't help but praise his efforts as she blindly rearranges the pillows at her head. "Right there," she urges. "_Oh_."

"You're especially vocal tonight," he says, licking his lips, and she's teetering so close to the edge that it takes her one moment to hear the words and another to process their meaning.

At first, all she knows is that he's _stopped _and _why God why _would he_ stop_?She groans in exasperation. Now that he's called her out on it, she's not sure she can give him the satisfaction of words. Or maybe she's just self-conscious about it now. No, definitely just defying him. That's it. Right.

"You like it when I talk to you," he says, lowering his face to her core again, "_especially_ like this."

The vibrations stir her; she can't even stifle the whimper.

She can just make out his words. He's uttering them so close to her, his hot breath caressing the aching place that his mouth just lavished with attention: "But you know what I think?"

Then he rests his head on her thigh, peeking up at her from beneath the linen. The rustling of the sheet and his sudden absence from her core have kissed her with a cool breeze. "I think you like talking, too. I think you get off on words whether they're mine or yours."

"Castle," she grits out, stroking his jaw. "Shut. Up."

"Oh, you don't mean that." His eyes twinkle as he kisses the palm of her hand.

Sweet. But she needs him where he was a moment ago and she needs him there now. "Can—just . . . This is not the time for conversation."

"I think it's the _perfect _time." He acknowledges her facial expression of sheer frustration by sliding a single finger through her wet flesh and drawing the digit into his mouth. Then he rests both hands on her thigh, beneath his cheek. "Mm," he teases, holding her gaze. "You're delicious."

Screw him. Her fingers fly to her center. If he's not going to pleasure her, she is not above taking the matter into her own perfectly capable hands. He can watch, for all she cares.

But Castle has other plans. Beckett no sooner circles her clit before her ruggedly handsome, utterly torturous man sits up to hold each of her hands on the bed beside her hips.

They both know she could take him, and she doesn't know if she's succumbing to him more because of the sensual audacity in his eyes or the grounding feel of his sturdy weight against her.

But there she goes—doing the whimpering thing again. He thinks it's adorable. She thinks about all the ways that she could kill him and probably get away with it.

He watches her dampen her lips as he leans in close to breathe against her sweat-slick throat. His whisper brims with seduction and humor both, and she loves him even more for it. "Tell me a story, Kate. Write me a Beckle romance."

She matches his hushed tone, equally erotic and teasing. "I thought you preferred Caskett. Being first and all."

He turns out his lip in thought. "Well, it's a new round, and this time—" He takes her nipple into his mouth, sucking and biting in counterpoint to the staccato rhythm of his muffled words: "—you're—definitely—coming—first."

Her gasps for air only encourage him to suck harder. "Fuck, Castle."

He grins into her breast, giving her the wiseass response that he usually does: "You already did." Then he leans back, still holding her hands to her sides but allowing her a bit of breathing space. With it comes another chill, his sudden absence along her body again rendering her in a mixed state of loss and anticipation. "Now come on. Tell me a story." His brows dance as he adds: "You can talk dirty if you want to."

She arches her back, trying to lift her hips into him, but he rises, too. The sight of this fruitless chase would be comical for anyone not in her position, wound as tightly with desire as she is right now.

She suspects that Castle, for one, is enjoying this. He's _smiling_, patiently and effortlessly waiting on a response. She decides to give him something to smile about. "How the fucking fuck do you expect me to come up with fucking words?"

He blinks, no stranger to Angry Beckett or even Cursing Beckett, but he's never heard a string of F-bombs from her. "Well, you've got at least one down." He purrs: "I like it. Do it again."

She wonders which one of them is getting off on words and defiance now. "I will not."

"That's OK. Being in the business, I got used to writing cleaner anyway. You can still make your story super sexy."

"I'm _not_—"

"Here," he interrupts. "I'll start. Once upon a time—"

She snorts. "A fairytale? Really?"

"Not a fairytale," he says, "but there _is_ magic, so it seemed fitting."

"Ah. A _fantasy_, then."

His lips twitch into a smile that she wants to kiss. "Or a fantastic reality."

She rolls her eyes, unwilling to admit aloud that she agrees fully with the phrase if it's their reality they're talking about. Fantastic may be an understatement—even if he _is_ teasing her now.

She clucks her tongue, only half-feigning disapproval. "I hope you use up all your cheesy lines on me and spare your readers."

"You _are_ my reader. Now let me finish."

"Funny," she hisses, ineffectively chasing his pelvis again. "I was going to say the same thing."

"Once upon a time," he begins once more, "there was a ruggedly handsome man . . ."

"Like I didn't see that one coming."

". . . And his extraordinary lover," he continues, nipping at her breast for the interruption. "One night, they stumbled into their castle—"

"I'm sorry," she says, like she needs him to repeat something she misheard, and for a fleeting moment he thinks it's the fact that he's implied that the couple cohabitates.

It isn't.

"When did they become _royalty_?" Beckett complains, and he loves that _this _is the inaccuracy that has caught her attention. "Or is this just a bad pun?"

"Fine," he grunts. "Their _abode_."

"You can't just say loft?"

"Who's the writer here?"

"You wanted my input," she chides, lifting her hips and sighing dramatically as he escapes her yet again.

"Yes. As collaborator, not editor. Unless _you _would rather tell the story."

"Fine, I will," she says, too disgruntled to realize that she's giving him exactly what he wants. "So they stumbled through the door."

"Of their abode," he chimes in, and she ignores him.

"And they took off all their clothes."

In his alarm, he can practically hear a record ripping. "What is this, a Nelly song? You can't just say 'they took off all their clothes.' Where's the passion? Where's the anticipation?"

"They," she says pointedly, arching upward, "didn't want to keep each other _waiting_." By the final word, she makes groin-to-groin contact and collapses from sheer joy at the feel of him, but his body is still vulnerable with satiation. "Seriously, Castle. If you're going to criticize my diction, I'm not telling you any stories."

He appears to recover, if only above the waist; his brain is in overdrive. "You know, when you say _diction _like that—"

Without the use of her hands, which are still in captivity, she massages his leg with her own. "Makes you want me?"

He remembers a time or two that he's said the same to her. How quickly she's learned. "Tell your story already." With that, he slides back down over her body and exhales over the wetness glistening between her legs.

"OK," she says, clearing her throat. "Once they were finally naked, he pushed her back on the bed and made a joke about the names of his characters and how he should be making even more money."

He grunts at the way that she has sold his joke short, but his mouth is already on her again, and he mercifully doesn't interrupt her.

That's when she interrupts her own story with a responsive moan, and all discernible words are abandoned to the oblivion of the tension building inside her. Her legs tremble. She's just about to break.

He pulls away to gaze at her face, eyes closed and smile so subtle and irresistible that it's everything he can do to restrain himself from ascending her lean body and initiating a deep kiss.

Too late.

He kisses her hard, clearly catching her by surprise despite that she _must _have felt the shift of weight as he moved.

Beckett's eyelids flutter open and her brows furrow. She can taste herself on his tongue, but this is something that usually happens when he's actually accomplished the mission. It doesn't even seem like an interlude; now that he's breaking the kiss, he's leaning away and simply smiling at her.

"Are you _stopping_?" she shrieks. "Castle, I swear—"

"You stopped first," he reasons.

"Finish what you started or I will make you—" Regret it? Pay? It doesn't matter, because he doesn't allow her to complete the sentence; lets it hang in the air, unfulfilled, like the unbearable need between her legs.

All too happily he interrupts: "Finish what _you _started or I won't make you _anything_."

Oh. No, no, no. She knows this scene. They've played this before; he's teased her and threatened to leave her wanting and waiting. And she vividly recalls how it ended the last time: she had him wrapped around her finger, so with barely any prompting from her, he had her wet flesh very literally wrapped around his.

He never could deny her anything.

His fingers had felt so good. She misses them now; remembers how skilled they were and will be, if he would _just_ . . .

She smiles complacently, exuding confidence as though they're playing poker and she refuses to let him believe he has the better hand. "I think we both know you can't go through with a threat like that."

He strokes her where she wants him but for only a moment before pulling away. "But this time we both have leverage, Kate. There's something I want from you that will give you exactly"—he strokes her again—"what you want."

As they hold one another's gaze, Castle can see the exact moment that her eyes darken.

"He pushes her down on the bed," she starts again, recalling the events of their evening but savoring each detail as though she's making it up on her own. "Teases her. Types imaginary words against her thighs."

With every word she speaks, he tongues inscrutable letters across her core.

Her breath is so ragged, her throat so tight, that the phrases are coming piece by piece, like a verbal strip tease. "They—they roll higher on the bed and—she straddles him."

Castle rolls the flat of his tongue against her clit and sucks.

"Words are so sexy," she says with a sigh, and as though to catch herself, she adds: "That's—that's what he teaches her, I mean."

He traces her opening with one thick finger, swirling circles against her until the very anticipation of having him further inside her is causing her limbs to stiffen. He holds out until her voice breaks with a sob, but she's a stubborn one, and she works through it, her words coming with no small amount of effort.

"And then he's inside her," she chokes out, and perfectly on cue, he pushes two fingers into her. "_Oh._"

He takes one deep stroke, allows her barely a moment to adjust, and follows it with shallow strokes that make her moan ecstatically.

She murmurs a string of incoherent sounds, which actually flesh out her story surprisingly well, before she finally manages words that either of them can understand. "And—he thrusts—into her," she sobs, "harder and harder and—"

Deeper he thrusts, adding a third finger to fill her and make up for the friction they're losing to the wetness, leaning in again, lapping and licking like he can't quench his thirst for her.

She looks like she's in anguish as she comes, her facial muscles failing here to distinguish between expressions of extreme pain and pleasure. Her vessels are flooding with heat. She cries out, and his fingers swirl inside her more gently, more slowly, as he waits for her to wind down from pulsating against him.

When she can finally speak, when she can finally breathe, she manages to ask on an exhale: "What do you think?"

"Incredible," he says, shamelessly ogling her flushed cheeks and swollen lips. "You taste incredible. You look incredible."

Involuntarily she strokes her fingertips up and down his arms, which brace her legs on either side. A light laugh is entirely swallowed in her attempt to keep talking. "I meant the Beckle romance. No constructive criticism from the best-selling author?"

"Oh," says Castle, assuming a professional tone and posture. "I liked it. Though, halfway through, you changed from past tense to present tense." There's a sparkle of wiseass in his eye again as he adds: "A rookie mistake . . . but I'll let it slide."

He's always so generous.


End file.
